Word: buick
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...automakers' hopes for a sales surge have been dashed against the rocks of high sticker prices and staggering interest rates. Only five years ago, $5,000 would have bought an option-packed Oldsmobile or Buick station wagon. Today, that amount is barely enough to pay for a stripped-down two-door Chevette. The same Buick wagon would cost nearly $11,000. The Big Three have been forced to hike the price of their fuel-efficient models mostly to pay for the $80 billion that they are spending to design and produce them. But Detroit may have pushed prices...
Already there are a few rumblings. Says Russ Cook, U.A.W. district committeeman at GM's Buick plant in Flint: "If we don't get smarter and start combatting the machines, we will be cannibalizing ourselves and competing against one another for jobs." Adds Larry Jones, a Chrysler metal-shop worker: "They say they are only going to put robots on boring jobs. But in an auto plant, all the jobs are boring jobs...
There are six or eight drivers in most of Scott's classes. The first day is devoted to shooting up an old Buick with a 9-mm machine gun, an automatic pistol and a 12-gauge shotgun so the students will be familiar with the firepower available to the "opposition." Most slugs easily penetrate the side of the car. Then four of the class put on crash helmets and seat belts for an initiation run around the track in one of Scott's four new, high-performance Chevrolet Malibu police cars...
...feedback from the car-ramming exercise is anything but sensuous. "Use the car as a weapon, if necessary," insists Scott. To learn what that means students take turns driving a beat-up 1974 Cadillac into an old bronze Buick special. Proper technique: slow down, then slam on the brakes to make the terrorists think you are stopping. Then gun the car, aiming for the front or rear axle. At 30 m.p.h. this barely rattles the Cadillac. But it spins the Buick into a full 360° turn and produces a very satisfying roar, crumpling metal and shattering glass. The Cadillac...
...Rose Parade" celebrating her 90th birthday. Materfamilias, resplendent in a bright, broad-brimmed hat, was not quite up to joining those marching a mile and a half in behalf of her favorite charity, the Special Olympics for the mentally retarded. But she waved and smiled heartily from a 1940 Buick convertible as the crowd sang "Happy Birthday" and a plane towed a similar greeting across the summer sky. What did Rose wish for on the day marking her nine decades of tragedy and triumph? Said she, looking wistful: "So many things...